Anderson Valley Horse Tongue (a funky sour)

Anderson ValleyHorse Tongue is a new sour joining the California brewery’s lineup this month.

In case you somehow missed it, Anderson Valley has been killing it lately with their various iterations of gose in the lineup.

Don’t let the name throw you off. No horse got its tongue in this beer. A barrel of experimental wheat beer went funky, in the most delicious way. So the brewers captured the blend of Pediococcus Damnosus, Lactobacillus, and Brettanomyces and started the process over intentionally this time.

The base beer is a wheat ale fermented with a Belgian yeast, the the harvest “funk” culture. After six months in stainless steel tanks, the beer was transferred to wine barrels to aged a bit more. The result is a session beer full of sour and funk.

The barn hand opened the door and panicked. One of our shire horses had reached over the stall, pulled a bung from its barrel, and was licking the beer inside. Fearing he’d be blamed, he replaced the bung and told no one. Months later, our brewers found their experimental wheat ale had turned sour and little funky, but it was delicious! Eventually, the barn hand confessed his secret but we all had a good laugh… And thus, the legend of our Horse Tongue was born.